“There is a darkness upon us that is flooded with light.”

That is a line from a song by the Avett Brothers, one of my favorite bands at the current time. For them it has meaning for their careers, but for me it captures a contemporary reality about the raging storm across the earth in regards to the advancement of the homosexual movement. As the Avett brothers used it, it had to do with the loss of their control of their music, with others telling them “in the fine print” what is right and what is wrong. They see it as obvious [“flooded with light”], but that it was “darkness” that had the dangerous potential for having a negative effect on their career as a band.

The metaphor of darkness flooded with light is particularly apt to describe the mind-boggling blindness of society today regarding homosexual behavior. From the beginning of mankind, homosexual behavior has been universally condemned as immoral, vile, and unnatural behavior to be proscribed, if not punished – though in most cultures it was indeed punishable by criminal law. Indeed, in the United States, nearly every state had criminal statutes prohibiting homosexual behaviors, and even the uber-liberal APA had categorized the behavior as abnormal and as a form of personality disorder, changing it only as late as 1973. Given this nigh unto universal condemnation, how is it that in a few short years homosexuality has become not only not criminal and perverse, but wholly acceptable by what the polls call a majority of American people?

The newness of this development is breathtaking, really. From the hinterlands of perversion to social approval and acceptability, homosexuality is now chic not only among the ultra liberals but also among even formerly conservative people, under the guise that in a “free” society, no one should be hindered from “loving” whomever they wish. I have put quotation marks around these two words, for those two words are at the very heart of the argument for the promotion and encouragement of homosexual behaviors of all sorts, including the allowance of homosexual marriage! And this is where the quote with which I opened this essay comes in.

“A darkness is on us...”

Homosexuality has not changed. It has remained constant as a minority perversion throughout human history. That history comes into stark light in the ancient Jewish scriptures of the Old Testament, particularly the account of the judgment of God on the plain cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, names which have for hundreds of generations been synonymous with homosexual perversion, particularly sodomy. God claims to have judged Sodom and Gomorrah for their sexual perversion and homosexuality, and the New Testament references that judgment at least twice, with one such citation from the lips of Jesus Christ himself. Not only does the New Testament continue to use Sodom and Gomorrah as examples of God’s judgment for their vile sinfulness, but the New Testament gives yet more particularity to the perversions of those cities, and explains why such a judgment was wrought. There is no scriptural text more explicit than Romans chapter one and First Corinthians chapter six in describing particularly polluting sins of sexual perversions, including explicitly homosexual behaviors by both male and females.

Homosexuality particularly a “spiritual darkness” of the corrupt mind

There is nothing “normal” about homosexual behavior. The normally functioning mind of sane persons is immediately repulsed by the notion of such behaviors. Even those who practice such things hide it with extraordinary efforts to conceal their behaviors, for I am fully persuaded that they themselves recognize – though they suppress such recognition – that their own behavior is perverse and abnormal. Only recently have homosexuals dared to boast and flaunt their sexual perversion in plain sight. In other words, the perversion of homosexual behavior is self-evident, obvious, needing no explanation. It is an unnatural perversion and any sane and thinking person knows that full well. It is, in a word, darkness. Here the Bible captures it exactly:

“For since the creation of the world His [God’s, that is] invisible attributes are CLEARLY SEEN, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead [divine nature, deity], so that they are without excuse, because, although THEY KNEW GOD, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but BECAME FUTILE IN THEIR THOUGHTS, AND THEIR FOOLISH HEARTS WERE DARKENED. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man – and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.”

“THEREFORE, God gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves…FOR THIS REASON, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged THE NATURAL USE for what is AGAINST NATURE. Likewise also the men [lit., males] LEAVING THE NATURAL USE OF THE WOMAN, burned in their lust for one another, males with males committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.”

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a DEBASED MIND, to do those things which are not fitting,”

Futile in their thoughts. Their foolish hearts were darkened. Debased mind. All these phrases indicate what I mean by “darkness” that has come upon society in our day. And this darkness is “flooded with light,” in that it is clear and obvious that such behaviors are vile and immoral perversions of nature. No one has to teach anyone that homosexual behaviors are abnormal; we all know it full well, even the homosexuals who practice such perversions. So to what do we owe this madness that has broken out across the earth in such a short period of time? What has caused this darkness across the earth?

Back in a while with some of my own reflections on this phenomenon.